On Collective Ministerial Responsibility and Impeachment
Introduction: Ian Brodie’s Article in The Dorchester Review Ian Brodie, one of Stephen Harper’s former chiefs of staff who served him both as Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition and as Prime...
View ArticleCollective Ministerial Responsibility and Censure in Australia
One of my Australian readers commented on the previous post and linked to House of Representatives Practice, the Australian equivalent of O’Brien and Bosc’s tome, and its commentary on the censure of...
View ArticleWhy The Finance Minister Is the Most Important After the Prime Minister
Introduction If you asked Canadians, Britons, or Australians which minister is the most important after the prime minister, you would almost invariably get the same answer: the Finance Minister —...
View ArticleHarjit Sajjan and the Architecture of Ministerial Responsibility
Introduction A controversy has erupted around Harjit Sajjan, Minister of National Defence and a retired Lieutenant-Colonel in the Canadian Army who served three tours of duty in Afghanistan, over...
View ArticleA Classical Liberal Defence of Constitutional Monarchy
Introduction: The Strange Americanism of Canadian Libertarians Since 2011 when I attended one of the Institute for Liberal Studies’ Liberty Summer Seminars (LSS), I’ve noticed that Canadian...
View ArticleA New Year’s Resolution for Political Scientists: Stop Saying That...
Introduction: A Lazy and Stupid Metaphor Political scientists like taking shortcuts and writing in shorthand. But sometimes, these cause them to get hopelessly lost rather than shortening their...
View ArticleThe Nature of the “Democratic Deficit” and Executive Federalism in Canada
Introduction The “Democratic Deficit” first referred to a critique from the late 1970s on how the European Economic Community ran its Parliament vis-a-vis its executive-like Commission. Canadian...
View ArticleConsensus Government & Confirmation Voting in Nunavut
My presentation at The Institute for the Study of the Crown in Canada’s Conference in Toronto in June 2019: “The Authorities of the Territorial Commissioners: Responsible Government in Yukon vs...
View ArticleThe Convoy Appeals to the Governor General to Overthrow Responsible Government
If you observe politics closely for somewhere between 10 and 15 years, you see pretty much everything at least once, as narratives and ideas switch parties and cycle through and recycle through yet...
View ArticleConsensus Government & Dissolving the Legislature in Northwest Territories
Wildfires Prompt a Special Sitting of the Legislative Assembly In August 2023, the skies turned an ominous orange over large swathes of the Northwest Territories as gargantuan wildfires gobbled up...
View Article
